I resisted buying Alain de Botton's Religion for Athiests, but I bought it for someone else, started reading it and have not been able to put it down. He suggests a complete re-ordering of humanistic knowledge in a way that would actually help people.
The humanities have lost most of their credibility because they are taught badly, as he explains, in a fragmentary and disorganized way with little regard to any notions of usefulness. But of course art, poetry, music, literature and noble philosophical ideas are necessary. We can't live with unrelieved pragmatism. Ugliness makes us miserable. We need the consolations of the beautiful things humanity produces. We also need depicitions of suffering humanity to understand that we are not alone in our suffering.
Religion, or the part of it that believes in a supreme diety, is hard to sell to people who have seen the real miracles of science and business and their ability to improve our lives (but also to make them harder). So he separates out what religion can offer in our real lives without making belief compulsory.
As he says, god did not create us: we created god out of the needs of our species. He is hewing close to Catholicism as many people practice it, allowing for sin and confession and forgiveness, things the more austere Protestant denominations scorn.
I am not in complete harmony with his point of view; my mother's family experienced a much more austere Catholicism than de Botton writes about and one with many punitive aspects. But I very much respect what de Botton has to say about the need to acknowledge our frailty as humans and our need for consolation and forgiveness.
Great book.

Comments

[Tabor]

I listened to an interview on one of the TV stations. As I am an agnostic, perhaps I should read it?

[Hattie]

I thought it was very helpful. I am eager to find out what others think of it.

[Kathy McGraw]

And he gave a very inspiring TED talk, on that very subject.

[Henry Hank Chap[in]

Good recommendation. The trouble is I knowwhat I think bout God and it hasn't changed in 50 years. However, I so have spirituality in a humanistic sense. I don;t agreethatthe humanties are in really terrible shape. Mittens Romney's definition of success is entirely monetary. Money, money. Boy, does he need the humanities. Guess he never read "The Great Gatsby" Typing fast because I keep stuffing dollar bills into the computer atthe Hilo Hawaiian Hotel. Home tomorrow. This town is dertainly less hard on the nerves than is Honolulu.

[Hattie]

Kathy: There is a lot to like about this man and his ideas.
Hank: Your social conscience has always guided your actions. I'm less focused than you, have done less in the real world to make it a better place, and a little moral schooling does not hurt me. Yes, and Romney is a horror. This is a spiritual person? That's a laugh.
Hilo is pretty relaxing, all right, but by no means boring. I'm really sorry we're missing your visit!

[musings]

I find this very interesting having just returned from Japan and seeing a culture with Buddhism, Shintoism and Christianity mixed in. I think people there use religion molded to what they need... which I think works. I found everybody kind and considerate everywhere we went.

[Hattie]

Kay: That was my experience too, in Japan.

[Henry Hank Chapin]

Mea culpa for my entry above. I truly was stuffing dollar bills into the hotel computer but, when you think of it, it's pretty remarkable that it's even possible. News travels so fast today that someone on the cruise ship that landed in Hilo told me about the Ken Auletta article about Stanford, and I haven't even gotten my copy of the New Yorker yet. My "prose" in my earlier entry is pretty laughable but it's real and decipherable. I'll let it stand as a monument to the only rushing I did in Hilo.

[Hattie]

Hank: That is the Kindle for you! Don't have to wait around for my New Yorker to arrive its customary three weeks late!